timwheatley.org

I already knew the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup layout at Infineon Raceway, but hadn’t run on it for a long time, probably since I ran there with NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (the previous simulation by the guys at iRacing).

Early this morning I joined a qualifying session at the circuit and set a 1:28.324. I joined the a race straight away and had an awful time with my consistency, finishing eighth. Afterwards I joined a Time Trial and worked on it a little, I was able to get down to a personal best laptime also and joined another Qualifying session at 11:20 am… I managed to get down to a 1:27.638 and was fairly happy with that, for now.

I joined the 12:00 pm Skip Barber Race Series event and found myself third on the grid. Just before the race started the man who had pole position quit the server, so this put me into a second-place starting position and also gave me the inside line into turn one. I knew (looking at others qualifying times), that nobody had got a good handle on this week’s track yet - so if I stayed clean, I might end up with my second win in two days!

I got a good start but had to give the first turn to the man who had started infront of me, I followed him closely the whole lap and pushed him pretty hard, knowing (because of his qualifying time) that he was capable of lapping around one-second a lap faster than I could. We pulled away from the rest of the field and I knew that if there was to be a battle for the win, it would be a battle between just us two.

On the second lap of the race I was still following closely as we both mounted the kerbing out of turn four, I watched the guy infront start to get sideways and knew that if I could get by, I had the lead… Luckily for me, he didn’t just get sideways, he speared off to the right side and probably hit the wall as he disappeared from the top six positions.

For the rest of the race (like with my win yesterday), the only person I had to worry about, was me. I felt really good out there though and found myself lapping quicker and quicker, eventually setting my fastest lap of 1:27.171 on lap seventeen of the twenty. Two people were faster than me, but showed less consistency, so I won with a margin of twenty-two seconds over second place.

I didn’t make a single error, again. I’m really feeling good on the racetrack right now… My iRating will soon catch up with my new found ability to stay on the track during these races and when it does I’ll probably struggle to win, so I’ll enjoy it while I can!

If you watch the video and wonder what’s going on with the gear selections on my fastest lap? I use a $30 wheel and it does that sometimes… It also shakes and glitches, but nothing that really harms my racing…

I went to the Chicago Auto Show yesterday. Like last year I ran the simulator at the State Farm stand and got fastest time. Fastest time of the day wins an iPod, so hopefully after we left nobody will have beaten my time…

The times on the board were a bit better this year than last, last year I set fastest time by around 2 seconds (over a 30 second lap), this year I set a faster time (30.07) but was only faster than the current leader by 0.6s.

So hopefully we’ll get a phone call telling us we won another iPod Shuffle.

I think firstly that if Insurance Companies are going to be taking this study seriously, they need to distinguish between racing games like those mentioned and the types of racing games and simulations that are actually available.

I can absolutely understand why the study could be correct. Having played Burnout I can tell you that I thought my reflexes were amazing as I managed to navigate through traffic while travelling much faster than them… and surely that’s the problem? These racing games simulate normal roads, normal roads where there are actually speed limits, normal roads where there are “innocent people” in those other cars you crash into when your reflexes aren’t quite fast enough. Couple that style of racing with the glorified slow-motion replays of every crash titles like Burnout provide you with and it’s easy for someone like me to see the problem.

I do play those types of games, but I also run racing simulations, racing simulations are completely different. There is no traffic heading in the opposite direction, there are no “innocent motorists” and the crashing isn’t glorified. Quite often if you make a mistake and crash in a racing simulation - that’s your race done as your car is wrecked - compare that with the endless supply of wreckable machines “God” supplies you with in the Burnout series.

Eventually if you play games like Burnout you are going to believe that not only are you supremely skilled, you’re also invincible. When you run a racing simulation, such as Grand Prix Legends, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season or the new iRacing.com Motorsport Simulation, the objective is to finish well in the race and that means making as few mistakes as possible, being a clean, smooth driver, being aware of other drivers and giving room to them when they get close to you. It is entirely different.

I have raced many times on games like Burnout and Need for Speed. I once was even commandeered by a work colleague to unlock a license for him on GT3 because he couldn’t do it… Almost every time I raced, I raced those games with my simulation head on, I slowed a lot more than I had to in a “bounce of the walls” style game, I didn’t often put myself in a risky position or crash and even though I may have looked slower I often ended up at the finishing line first.

Back in June 2006 I was lucky enough to be able to drive a Skip Barber 2000 racecar at Lime Rock Park, my only “training” prior to this was done on iRacing.com’s new simulator. I was frightened about being out there on the real track in the real car, I wasn’t crazily confident. Driving a Dodge Neon, Viper and RAM before the Skip Barber 2000 gradually taught me the real world skills I already had locked in my brain from the racing simulations I race on a daily basis. I had 40 minutes of track time and only 10 minutes in did I have one little loss of control - but I caught it. You can actually play these arcade style games like Need for Speed in a realistic manner but the game does not promote this, they promote breaking the speed limit, they promote crashing into “innocent traffic” and they often promote running from the Police. Racing simulations promote being the best driver you can be, being fast on a closed circuit while also maintaining control of the car.

Running Papyrus’ NASCAR Racing 2003 Season on a Dell laptop can be a bit of a nightmare, there are issues with Intel Speedstep and also the onboard sound.

But fear not, I got N2003 running perfectly on mine with just a little work and because my laptop suffers from overheating issues I also managed to make my machine more stable for everyday use.

Note: I am not responsible for any damage done to you or your machine after following (or even trying to follow) these instructions.

1. Buy an external soundcard. I went for an External USB Creative Soundblaster Live! Model Number: S80490. After installation you can disable your onboard card by going to Start, Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager. Click the + next to “Sound, video and game controllers”, right-click on your onboard sound device and then select “disable”.

2. Ensure Speedstep is enabled in the BIOS (it should be by default).

3. Download Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) from pbus-167.com and install it.

4. Setup each tab of the program to look like mine does in the screenshots below.

You may ask why would a 2.4GHz system run better at 1.2GHz? Well, good question. Have you ever been playing a game or running a simulation on your computer and suddenly it’s like your system is struggling to cope? Have you ever been racing along and then suddenly seem to be running in slow motion (even though you have a high framerate)? The reason is that your system is either getting too hot or the system doesn’t think the CPU speed is required anymore, so your gaming machine suddenly might switch from running the game/sim at 2.4GHz to running it at 330MHz. With NASCAR 2003 CPU clock switching can be catastrophic, the simulation will not continue to run in a way that you will be able to race and although I have experienced “slow motion” in many types of games while using the XPS Gen 2, it really hurts most with racing games/sims. The thing also is that general use of the computer seems better for me at a constant 1.2GHz, almost like the system knows where it’s at. Firefox opens Web pages faster and Windows Explorer opens files, folders noticably quicker than it did previously.

I was recently very annoyed while in the middle of a race for work my CPU chip decided it didn’t want to be performing at it’s maximum level anymore. I have had this problem quite often when running a high-end piece of software my system seems to “timeout” going fast and decides to revert back to between 80 and 200MHz rather than it’s maximum 2400MHz.

I had a similar problem before with Grand Prix Legends, so I looked up some of the fixes and this utility appeared to solve my problems for me.

It is so very, very annoying that Windows XP manages your power saving without giving you any idea of what it is actually doing. It has taken me months to find out what this issue is and it’s only thanks to it happening with work that I found out.

Of course for the huge majority of the time I will have the SpeedswitchXP Utility on “dynamic switching” the same as Windows XP had it, but now every time I start to do something where I know I need the power and XP wouldn’t, I’m going to crank it up!

It was Billy’s birthday yesterday so Billy, Chris and I went to the Chicago Auto Show. Towards the end of the day we found ourselves at the State Farm stand, where they had a full car body attached to a motion platform running NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. The fastest laptime of the day would win an iPod Shuffle.

Now as some of you may know, I have quite a bit of experience with that simulation… I told Chris and Billy, so they persuaded me to join the line. I got into the car and pulled out of the pitlane.

Not only was it a strange motion platform (which only seemed to simulate lean of the car, rather than full body movement), but automatic gears were on, as were all the driver aids… It took me the entire warm-up lap to get the hang of how the thing was going to drive - also how the motion platform was going to move.

The best time before I ran, was 32.2 seconds, closely followed in the “top five” by other 32 second laptimes. On my first lap I did a 30.7s, then I did a 30.2s.

When we left the show we went back to check, at that time I still held a 0.7s advantage over second place. I got a call this morning informing me I was a winner. The boards at the Show said that it was an iPod Shuffle, the woman this morning said iPod Nano… But whichever is great.

GPL - works fine using the 32 bit emulator built-in.
N2003 - works fine using 32 bit emulator.
TrackMania Sunrise - fails on launch due to copy protection.
GTR - fails on launch due to copy protection.
Silent Hunter 3 - fails on launch due to copy protection.
Rome Total War - works fine in 32 bit.

The copy protection issues are all to do with Star Force. However, Star Force say it is the developer who needs to update their software, as their protection software will work with Windows x64.

I’ll try to update this as and when I find out, this isn’t verified info though and I can only speak from what I know. Obviously I’m not just mentioning racing games…

If you intend to upgrade, do not use the facility offered by Microsoft of trading in your 32 bit version for your 64 bit version, because at this time you will need a 32 bit Windows XP installation if you intend to get use out of it. If you (like me) have a 64 bit capable chip and can’t wait to try it out (I can tell the difference just in the Windows environment), it costs $20 for the trial to be shipped to the UK, more info here.

I’ve released a track I made for N2003 and it looks like it works as I let it go early this morning and nobody has told me of a problem yet!

Mountain Central is a challenging track for Nascar Racing 2003 Season. It’s a fantasy track with some excellent height changes, along with some tricky blind turns and really fast sections. One full race is 90 laps, with the pitstops being a big strategic point as pitting takes around 50 seconds, PLUS the pitstop time…

You can download it from here. Mirror (requires login).